If you are interested in Business transformation and interesting business growth articles as well as Microsoft Dynamics but haven’t already visited http://explore.dynamics.com then I encourage you to do so soon.

Explore Dynamics came as a nice surprise as it is not widely advertised Dynamics website (or at least I didn’t see it before). It includes a number of business focused articles and whitepapers covering a variety of areas as well as the different components of the Dynamics 365 platform: Sales, Customer Service, Field Service, Project Services Automation, Operations, etc.

You will find a large number of whitepapers and “Flipbooks” (apparently it’s a proper word now). The content is mostly, if not all, business oriented with focus on Business issues, market challenges, future technology trends and research covering a variety of areas including high growth and enhanced services.

I just thought I’ll share it on my blog so my subscribers can hopefully benefit from these white papers in their business transformation programmes.

In this article, I’m trying to give some guidance to new Dynamics 365 learners on how to gain access to the essential Dynamics Learning Portal (DLP). You can access DLP through this link: https://mbspartner.microsoft.com/Home

However, you need to make sure that you are using Microsoft logins that are associated with a Dynamics Partner or Customer who have access to the Dynamics Learning Portal. Otherwise, you will not be able to access DLP.

Alternatively, if you do not have access to DLP via your employer, either as a partner or customer, then your next best option is to register as a consultant at https://www.365talentportal.com/. Talent 365 Portal can give you access to DLP as a signed up consultant with them. Please talk directly to them if you require further guidance.

Once you gain access to DLP, my advice is to build up a learning plan (as per my previous post) that can help you learn Dynamics 365 step by step through video tutorials, live sessions, etc. You should always start with the “Introduction to Microsoft Dynamics 365” video (level 200) and then move to the value proposition.

Hope this helps! Feel free to comment below if you need help accessing DLP and I’ll see what I can do. You can also register for the Free Dynamics 365 Mentoring Programme on the CRM Boutique: http://crm.boutique

Now that you have a Dynamics 365 instance, you need to start following a step by step training or guide to learn Dynamics 365 functionality. I strongly suggest using Microsoft Dynamics Learning Portal as it has training videos, virtual sessions, live online training and training guides and content for Dynamics 365 across the various modules: Sales, Services, Field Services, Project Services, Marketing, etc. This is all delivered through what is called “Dynamics Learning Plans”.

In summary, the Dynamics Learning portal offers two types of learning plans:

My Learning Plans have an intuitive, user-friendly UI that provides more flexibility and customization without sacrificing current features. My Learning Plans are offered in two views:

Tracks and Capabilities view offers users the option of viewing a taxonomy-driven format that displays the training assets in your learning plan alphabetically by track and capability. While users will not be able to edit from within this plan, they will have the ability to track progress, print, export and apply filters.

My suggestion is that you choose the Readiness Learning Plan, select levels 100 and 200,

select “Application Consultant” role

and then select the business application you are most interested in (Sales, Customer services, etc.)

Here are the results that come back from these selections:

Once you got the results, you can start adding these results to your learning plan using the “+” under my learning plan in the bottom right hand corner.

In my next blog post, I will discuss more about how to gain access to Dynamics Learning Portal if you don’t have it through your Microsoft partner or customer account. I will also cover the next learning and development areas and options available to progress your career in Dynamics 365.

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Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Process Flows (BPF) have seen a major upgrade recently since the move from Dynamics CRM 2016 (version 8.1) to Dynamics 365 (version 8.2). The change is not only to the new Business Process Flow designer but it is extended to adding few more capabilities are particularly useful for many situations. For example, you can now add a workflow to a Business Process Flow and you have few more actions to steps.

The major enhancement that happened to Business Process Flows are around its data model. Business Process Flows are now an entity with each instance of each BPF created as a record (otherwise you couldn’t have had a BPF firing a workflow).

However, this comes with additional changes that you need to be aware of. For example, you now have a tab on every Dynamics Security Role which is called business process flow. This tab lists every BPF available in the Dynamics CRM instance so you can apply the various CRUD privileges to each BPF as part of each security role.

This also means that when you go to the Business Process Flow designer, you can no longer select specific security roles assigned to your BPF. This is now done inside your Security Role. It’s an important change that may confuse old timers who lived inside Dynamics CRM for so long!

Please also note that this means if you migrate a custom security role from Dynamics CRM 2016 (v 8.1) to a Dynamics 365 (v 8.2), your security role may not have the required privileges assigned.

So in summary, rather than assigning security roles to a Business Process Flow from within the Business Process Flow designer, you apply these inside each one of your security roles.

Hope this helps!

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I have recently built a few Microsoft Dynamics 365 Apps for a Dynamics 365 CRM Solution. I personally found the whole Dynamics 365 Apps idea to be brilliant as it does remove a lot of the clutter / noise / unnecessary entities, buttons, etc. that users don’t need. These are then replaced with a single App that only has what a user requires for their day to day operations. For example, a CRM call centre user will have an App that only shows the entities, forms, dashboards, business process flows, etc. that they need and nothing more. This provides a greater customer experience and higher user adoption and engagement (I saw this first hand).

Back to the subject of the post! Dynamics 365 Apps security can be applied using security roles as follows (source: :

Go to Settings > My Apps.

In the lower right corner of the app tile you want to manage access for, click the More options button , and then click Manage Roles.

In the Manage App dialog box, Choose whether you want to give app access to all security roles or selected roles.

Roles. If you choose Give access only to these roles, select the specific security roles (Important: see point “a” below)

Click Save and

Finally, re-publish your App (the last step is optional).

Sounds simple, correct? Well, there are a couple of “Gotcha” considerations that you have to be aware of:

a. Any security role that you choose from the list of roles that can access an App, MUST (I repeat MUST) have the “Read App” privilege. You can check that by opening the required security role and navigate to “Customizations” and you will see the “App” privilege in the first line under security role -> customisations. This is really important:

b. You can hide the “Custom” app which is basically the original conventional Dynamics CRM standard access app to all security roles (except to administrators) by clicking on “Hide for all Roles” on the “Custom / Full” App. This makes this app disappear from the left hand list of available Apps to standard users. However, if the user types in the standard CRM url they will still be able to access it, yet with limited data access based on their security roles. For example, if a user typed in: https://yourcrminstance.crm4.dynamcis.com they will access the custom / full app. You should always make sure your users only use the Apps in this case so for example:

https://yourcrminstance.crm4.dynamcis.com/Apps/yourcustomApp

Finally, we all know that this great new features, Dynamics 365 Apps, is still a brand new capability so it will continue to evolve and improve in the upcoming releases – so watch this space!

Hope this helps.

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Many Microsoft Dynamics 365 projects require a photo gallery. About a year ago, I needed a free open source photo gallery to be embedded in Dynamics CRM custom and system entities to display photos attached to notes on any entity. After a lot of research, I only found “paid for” photo galleries and very little free open source Photo Gallery that can work with both Dynamics CRM Online and on-premise.

Hence, I decided to build my own Microsoft Dynamics 365 Photo Gallery and I’m now releasing it as another contribution to the Microsoft Dynamics community. The Dynamics 365 Photo Gallery utilises the open source FlexSlider photo gallery and the Dynamics CRM JavaScript libraries CRM Fetch Kit and XRM Service ToolKit.

Deployment is simple. There is one main web resource (tll_MMDPG.htm) that you embed as a web resource into any custom or system entity form on both Dynamics CRM Online and on-premise versions. Once embedded, it will read all your photos attached to notes on this record. Here is how it looks in CRM:

Dynamics Photo Gallery MMDPG

Important Notice: Microsoft Dynamics 365 Photo Gallery – MMDPG – is provided as is with no warranties under MIT license with the condition / requirement to preserve the name of the publisher and author (Mohamed Mostafa) and a copyright statement within the code to refer back to the author and the original solution.

Some of the built-in features and functionalities that the Dynamics 365 Photo Gallery (MMDPG) provides are:

Display all photos added as attachments to Entity Form Notes.

Only read and display photo attachments and ignore other file types.

Carousel Photo Gallery

Slideshow of photos

Start and Stop Slide Show

Thumbnails to select which photo to display

Next and Back arrows to move between different photos

Deployment Instructions:

Import the unmanaged CRM Solution MMDPG_x_x_x_x.zip

Publish All Customisations

The main web resource tll_MMDPG.htm can be found under the Solution components list.

Embed tll_MMDPG.htm as a web resource inside any of your entity forms both custom or system.

The gallery is made up of 15 files including MMDPG main web resource.
Make sure all 15 files are included in you CRM Solution and published.

MMDPG has been tested on Dynamics CRM Online 2016 (8.0 and 8.1), On-premise 365 and Dynamics 365 (8.2). However, I cannot see any reason for it not to work on other previous versions as it uses standard FetchXML calls.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 Photo Gallery MMDPG is provided free of charge, open source (MIT License with condition / requirement to preserve the author) and is available to download from this blog post (below). It is also available to download and contribute to on its Open source CodePlex project site. There is only one condition for the license which is the requirement to preserve the name of the owner and author (Mohamed Mostafa) and a copyright statement within the code to refer back to the author and this original work Dynamics 365 Photo Gallery MMDPG.

If you would like to contribute to this open source project by adding functionality and features, please get in touch via a comment below or through CodePlex. All contributor names will be listed here on the blog post. In addition to the author/publisher, current contributors are:

Anupam Khasa

… Contribute and get your name here

All enhancements and contributions are welcome. Please comment below if you want help or if you want to contribute.

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Preface: This article is a follow up after a number of #MSDyn365 (Dynamics CRM) conference sessions where I talked about this topic. The presentation slides from the session are at the bottom of this post and I will be publishing a white paper with more details soon. Please comment below if you would like a copy of the whitepaper. This post builds on experiences (plus pains) and lessons learnt during a number of number of large scale multi-thousand users Dynamics CRM Online implementations taking into account data protection, compliance, regulatory issues and strategic considerations.

“The answer is the Cloud, what is your question?” I don’t know about you, but I have heard this sentence (or similar wording) quite a few times in recent years.

While you can argue for or against this statement, the way I see this, is on a case by case basis. Every organisation is unique and every digital & business transformation programme is different.

Having a blanket view or a pre-decided position, in either directions you go, may mean that organisations do not investigate or consider all factors affecting this extremely significant business decision. For this reason, in this article I am not going to recommend one way or the other but I’m inviting all readers to consider and evaluate the variety of factors that impact their move to the Cloud, or not.

Strategic Business and Technical considerations discussed in this article and the attached slides/white paper, are focusing on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Cloud or as previously known Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Technical, Integration and Reporting considerations mentioned may not apply to other Cloud CRM platforms. Unlike Microsoft Dynamics 365, other CRM platforms such as SalesForce may not have an on-premise version.

There are very good reasons for a CTO, CIO, Head of IT or similar leadership roles to decide that the Cloud is too risky and they want to do the implementation on Dynamics 365 on-premise. These reasons should not be trivialised or not considered even in our current Cloud First era. Some of the examples of really valid and common reasons to stay or choose on-premise are:

Each and every reason mentioned above, could literally take a whole article or even more. Hence, I won’t cover these here in this post but I’ll try to talk about them in more detail in the (soon-to-be-published) white paper I’m currently writing about the subject.

You can also listen to my recent talks in various Dynamics conferences where I talk about this subject extensively. A YouTube link will be published here soon <>.

While I won’t go through the details in this article, I am however going to say that I have personally spent days, literally, in never ending meetings to discuss just the regulatory, compliance and data protection aspect of going to Cloud Dynamics CRM with one recent 10K+ CRM implementations. After lots of trips between Redmond, Seattle and London, lots of Skype conferences, etc., we have all reached the conclusion that this highly regulated organisation can safely go to the Cloud CRM option as long as they implement a number of very detailed safeguards. It was a relief to reach that conclusion but it was also a great learning for myself and most of us involved (including our Microsoft colleagues).

Saying that, there are still good reasons that may drive your organisation to stick to the on-premise version. While License Costs may not be a reason any more following the new license model of Dynamics 365, but there are other technical considerations around a) Reporting, b) Integration and c) Technical. I list these below without detail at this stage but hopefully the talk and the white paper covers that sufficiently.

Finally, and perhaps very importantly, please consider the fact that a lot of the new features and capabilities in Dynamics 365 CRM that are Online Only and Cloud Only. A full list (with the MSDN source) can be found in the attached slides (pdf) available to download below. The list includes some significantly innovative and transformational features such as Project Services, Field Services, Relationships insights, Portals, advanced analytics, etc.

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Have you ever felt that you need a career advice, guidance on learning resources or an expert opinion on which direction to take with your Dynamics 365 career?

As a way to give back to the Microsoft Dynamics Community, myself and few other Dynamics 365 veterans are starting a Microsoft Dynamics 365 Mentoring programme to help individuals move into the Dynamics 365 market and grow their skills and experience in the area. Microsoft Dynamics 365 (or Dynamics CRM until recently) is a rising star in the Cloud Technology market and is becoming more and more prominent amongst Digital Transformation Platforms. For more than 12 years Microsoft has been investing in the Dynamics platform and growing its market share regularly every year.

There are currently lots of opportunities for aspiring and proactive individuals who want to move into the Microsoft Dynamics 365 (CRM and ERP) domain. You may be a fresh/recent graduate, IT enthusiast or a consultant who has been focusing on other CRM or ERP technology platforms (such as SAP, Salesforce, Oracle, Sage, etc.) and you want to move to Dynamics 365 market and get a job in this field. If this is the case, this Dynamics 365 mentoring programme is especially designed for you. A number of Dynamics 365 industry leaders who have been working in this domain for more than 12 years in some cases, are happy to help and guide you, free of charge. Mentoring is a rewarding experience for both the mentee but also the mentor. Mentoring will be done remotely over a Skype call, emails, etc. or in some cases, a face to face meeting in a public café may be an option at a later stage.

At a high level, Mentors will be able to provide Mentees with the following:

Career advice on which graduate programmes, job opportunities or career path to pursue in the Dynamics 365 domain.

Learning advice. For example: Which sections of the Dynamics 365 Technology Platform are key to focus on or have shortage of consultants, etc.

Provide Technical or Functional advice on how to build a solution or resolve a problem – please use Dynamics forums to ask these questions

A way to ask Mentors for jobs in their companies. They will let you know if they have an opportunity for you but please don’t use the programme as a way to ask for a job.

This is not a free Dynamics 365 Training opportunity. This is a free career advice and mentoring provided by experienced consultants as a way to give back to the community.

The programme is currently only available for mentees currently residing in the UK and Europe who are interested to move into the Dynamics 365 CRM market and industry domain. Free resources and guidance on available training is provided as part of the programme.

If you are interested in joining the programme and you satisfy the above conditions, please register through CRM Boutique (http://crm.boutique). Alternatively, you can connect to me directly on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/mohamed-i-mostafa) or via my blog: http://MohamedMostafa.co.uk. When you register, please include a summary of your current current status and what you expect to achieve from the programme, then I’ll be back with a proposed Mentor and more details on the programme approach. The programme is subject to availability and we do not guarantee all applicants a mentor.

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The newly announced Microsoft Dynamics 365 is certainly a massive and exciting move by Microsoft to gain additional market share of CRM & ERP Business Solutions. Dynamics 365 with its CRM, Ax and Nav components and the ability to integrate them together via Common Data Services (previously known as Common Data Model) is certainly an interesting step forward for everyone in the Dynamics Community. Microsoft Flow, Power Apps and the new Power BI capabilities are all adding to the positive hype but also adds to the pressure on Microsoft Dynamics Implementation partners to keep up to speed with all these new technologies and features.

One big question, my clients are currently asking is whether or not they should consider CRM Online and Ax Online (Dynamics 365), a hybrid of the two or even a hybrid model (CRM Online and CRM on-premise hybrid setup).

In my view, the important observation from the comparison table below is that Microsoft increasing focus on Artificial Intelligent is concentrated on the Cloud with most of these capabilities and features Online only. Other significantly important and rising features such as Microsoft Dynamics Field Services and Microsoft Project Services Automation are all Dynamics 365 Online only. Some excellent new features such as App designer and Sitemap designers are also Dynamics 365 CRM online only.

For any organisation considering or planning to use any of these features, they will certainly need to consider Dynamics 365 cloud (previously known as CRM Online).

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I have recently been asked by one of my clients to take them through a walkthrough / high level training / demo of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online (also applies to Dynamics CRM 2016). The audience is a collection of Client senior leadership, programme leadership and various business stakeholders.

I decided to limit handouts to a single A4 Agenda which lists in a chronological order Dynamics CRM modules, features and functionalities to be covered along with Dynamics CRM navigation, layout and capabilities such as search, filtering, sorting, menu bars, etc.

I then thought I’ll share this suggested agenda list with my blog followers to help everyone out if they are looking for a recommended agenda for Dynamics CRM Introduction or basic Microsoft CRM training. It is certainly not an exhaustive list of all agenda items that you could cover and the scope & flow may also need to change from one client to the other. This agenda, however, seemed sensible for my client needs and requirements.

The agenda is available as an a downloadable PDF file at the bottom of the post below or you can simply copy and paste it from the following list.